


A Momentous Day

by Luthien



Series: Luthien Does Writer's Month 2019 [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Marriage Proposal, Minor Character Death, Romance, Sappy, Writer's Month 2019, all the things, but there's also a fair bit of sap in there, yes it's hurt/comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 05:14:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20091838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthien/pseuds/Luthien
Summary: On the day Sansa is crowned Queen in the North, Brienne receives some bad news.





	A Momentous Day

**Author's Note:**

> My fill for Writer's Month Day 2: hurt/comfort
> 
> Part of the same universe as [Love is in the Little Things](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20070313), but set at an earlier point in their relationship
> 
> Look, I just sat down and wrote this in one go. No one's even looked at it. It is what it is.

The raven arrives at Winterfell just after the start of the feast celebrating the coronation of Queen Sansa. Jaime knows it has brought ill tidings as soon as Brienne reads the message. Her face changes from smiling at him over her goblet, as light-hearted as she ever is, to something more closely resembling the stone visages of the Kings of Winter in the crypts. Her expression is as closed off and remote as it was when first he saw her, looming over him in that pigsty that they called a cell at Riverrun.

"What's the matter?" he asks quietly, because he has the right to ask, at least, now that he shares her bed and knows the secrets of her body if not her heart.

"I-" she stops before she's even properly started. She reaches for her goblet, almost knocking it over in her haste, and gulps the wine. It goes down the wrong way and she holds a hand to her chest, to her heart, as she coughs. "I have to go," she says.

Jaime's not sure that Brienne's talking to him, or that she's even seeing him any more. She gets up and she leaves—the table, the room, and him. Just like that.

She's distressed. Jaime should leave her to deal with whatever it is. She clearly wants to be alone. She said that she needed to go, not that she wanted him to come with her.

But he's already getting to his feet. He knows that there are eyes on him, noting that he is leaving the room almost on Brienne's heels. There will be muttering and sniggering, too low and not close enough for him to identify the culprits, before he reaches the door. He knows that too. The whispering follows them all around this place. They're discreet, but everyone knows that they retire to the same bedchamber every night, and people love to gossip. Even these dour northerners are no exception.

He stops before Sansa- before her grace, extending his apologies and assuring her that he intends no discourtesy.

"Just go after her," Sansa says.

"Should I take that as a royal command, your grace?" he asks archly, because even though he's older than he ever thought to be and there are touches of silver at his temples and in his beard, he still sometimes fails to think before he speaks.

"Yes," says Sansa, for a moment looking uncomfortably like the image of her late mother. Perhaps a little like all mothers, everywhere.

Jaime gives her the smile that usually worked on his own mother, and sweeps a florid, courtly bow. "As your grace commands!"

But he does not swagger and smirk as he leaves the room. Even as he turns away from the Queen, the smile is gone from his lips and his stride is long and purposeful.

Brienne is not in their bedchamber. Perhaps that is not so surprising at this hour, but she's not in the yard, either, nor the stables, nor the armoury, nor in the little room with the writing desk that she uses for her correspondence and anything else that requires her to use pen and ink. She's not in the barracks, or even in the Queen's private rooms, though he knows that's a long shot since the Queen, like everyone else of note, is at the feast. Brienne is not even in the tiny, half-ruined sept, where he's found her praying more than once before now.

It's only when he visits the kitchens and finds the place in uproar after a careless kitchen boy knocked over a vast cauldron of soup, but _still_ no sign of Brienne, that Jaime starts to panic. He tamps the feeling down. He will be of no use to her if he does not keep his calm.

He goes to the godswood, mainly because it's just about the only place left bar the crypts that he hasn't checked yet. He doesn't really expect to find her there, so his sigh of relief comes out of him in a startled whoosh of white breath as he spies Brienne standing near the weirwood tree, staring into the pond.

He comes to her, but stops a few feet short of her, giving her breathing space. She gives no sign that she's noticed his arrival, but after a little while she looks up, looks directly at him, and says, "I have to leave."

"You did. Everyone saw you rise from your seat and leave the feast."

Brienne sends him an exasperated look, but it lacks the accompanying fondness that he's come to expect from her. "I don't mean leaving the feast, and you _know_ I don't mean leaving the feast, so why-"

He steps forward and catches her wrist as she starts to turn away. "Don't leave _me_," he says forcefully. And then, softer, "Please."

She stares at him, her blue eyes bright as the sky on the sunniest, coldest day of winter and welling up with tears of misery and despair. "My father's dead," she says abruptly, and Jaime pulls her to him as she starts to cry.

Jaime closes his arms about her, saying nothing, just letting her weep away the first sharp pain of loss onto his shoulder. It's cold out here in the godswood. Well, it's always cold in the thrice-damned north, but most especially in the godswood. Jaime wants to stamp his feet and blow on his bare hands, but he doesn't. Instead, he pulls off his cloak and places it around Brienne's shoulders before enclosing her in his embrace once more. If he can do nothing else for her, he can at least try to keep her warm.

He's all too aware of the symbolism of what he will simply laugh away as a caring gesture, should she mention it later. He'd thought to cloak her in his colours one day soon, if she'd have him, but perhaps this is the closest he'll ever get to it.

Brienne's face is unlovely when at last she lifts her head from his shoulder, her cheeks pink and blotched and her eyes swollen from her tears. Jaime has never wanted more badly to kiss her, to try to take away her heartache.

He doesn't kiss her. "Tell me," he says instead.

"Tell you what?" Brienne frowns, not sure what he's asking.

"Tell me anything you want."

Brienne screws her eyes up tight, a look of agony clear on her face for a fleeting moment before she covers her face with one hand. But then she takes a deep, steadying breath through splayed fingers and blows it out again, before making herself stand straighter with a visible effort as her hand drops to her side. She also takes a step back, away from Jaime and out of his embrace. He feels bereft, which is ridiculous since she's still standing right there, and colder than before.

"I always thought that one day, after everything, I'd go back home and see my father. That he'd greet me with a smile and a warm embrace, that we would sup together as I told him of my adventures. And I thought perhaps that we—you and I, I mean—that we could have…" Her voice trails off.

"That we could have… what?" Jaime asks, feeling as if there's suddenly a little more warmth in the weak winter sunshine. She'd thought to invite him to Tarth with her, then. Or, at least, she had before the raven had come this afternoon.

"You'll think me foolish. I don't even know if you really… We've never spoken of- of _feelings_ before."

"I stayed here with you when I could have gone south, back to what used to be my home and what's left of my family. Back to… well, that doesn't matter any more. But even if we forget all that, I'll remind you that I asked you not to leave me, just a few minutes ago. I'm positive you heard me. What sorts of feelings do you think I have? Or don't have?"

"I don't know!" Brienne says. "It seems to me that you're attached to me, that maybe… You haven't grown tired of me yet. At least, I'm fairly certain that you haven't."

Jaime blinks, and slowly becomes aware that his mouth is hanging open in surprise. "Are you serious, wench?" he asks. "I know I'm no great prize, a one-handed has-been knight whom no one really trusts, and perhaps with reason, but-"

"_I_ trust you," Brienne breaks in, suddenly fierce.

"Yes, of course you do, you stupid wench," Jaime says, and he can't help but smile as what feels like the weight of the world starts to ease from his shoulders. He has nothing to lose, except her, and it's becoming clearer to him by the moment that that's not going to happen. "That's one of the many reasons why I love you, and always will."

"You…" Brienne says in a whisper. Her face is a sight to behold, still tear-stained and drawn, but her mouth is hanging open in at least as great astonishment as Jaime's was just a moment ago, and her eyes are a mix of warring emotions.

"This is the part where you're supposed to put me out of my misery and tell me that you love me back," Jaime says lightly, but his shoulders are tense, and not just because they're hunched against the cold.

"I… Why didn't you tell me before?" she says.

"Why didn't you? Assuming that you do return my feelings. Either way, I would deem it a great favour if you'd waste no more time in making your intentions toward me clear," he says, still trying to pass it off as something that does not matter, that does not have the power to injure him. If she does, in truth, not love him after all this… Well then, they may as well take the other hand.

"It was never the right time," she says, even as he says, "The time was never right."

They stare at each other, and Jaime lets out a bark of laughter while Brienne grins incredulously. Then she's in his arms, properly this time, and he's in hers, and their lips meet in the middle somewhere and she's kissing him in a way that tells him she loves him just as truly as he loves her, even if she never puts it into words.

After a while they have to stop for air, and stand there, gasping, breathing the freezing air into protesting lungs. They'll need to go inside soon.

Brienne smiles, but it's a smile mingled with sadness. This was always going to be a momentous day for the North, but it's turned out to be momentous in almost every way possible for Jaime and, especially, Brienne.

"I'm sorry about your father," Jaime offers. "Truly. I wish I'd had the chance to meet him." It's only the truth. He's often wondered what sort of father had produced a daughter as entirely unique as Brienne, had instilled the values that forged a character of such steely goodness in her. Now, he will never get to meet the man in person. He suspects that to know Brienne is to know her father, though, at least in most of the ways that matter.

"Thank you," Brienne says. Their faces are still hardly more than a breath apart, as they stand with their arms wrapped around each other. Neither of them seems inclined to let go any time soon. "I… I wanted to take you to Tarth, when things were more settled here in the North. I thought…" She blushes, a layer of crimson over the top of the pinkness left by her tears. She glows, as bright as a berry, almost.

"What did you think?" Jaime asks softly. "Tell me."

"I thought that maybe we could marry there," Brienne says, and hides her face against his neck. "If.. if that was something that you might want."

Jaime reaches up and touches two fingers under her chin, tilting it up until she has no choice but to look at him.

"Tell me that you love me," he instructs.

She frowns. "Of course I love you," she says, sounding much more like herself all of a sudden.

"That's good to know," Jaime says. "I just wanted to be sure before I accept your proposal."

"My… what?"

"I believe you just proposed marriage to me. Well, I accept."

"I didn't… That wasn't meant to be…" Brienne protests.

"And yet it was. Or are you taking it back?"

Brienne shakes her head, appearing lost for words, or possibly just trying to contain her laughter. It's good to see her laugh, or want to, more than good, so soon after she's been crying her eyes out in his arms.

"I believe that means we're betrothed," he says, and doesn't try to hide his grin. Not that he could, with her long legs and arms and… _everything_ still pressed up against him. He's half-hard, which is no real surprise. She rarely has to do more than look at him and he has to stop himself from panting after her as she strides around the castle each day. If not for the fact that it's utterly freezing out here, he'd have her up against the weirwood, here and now.

"Let's go inside," Brienne suggests.

"We have many people to inform of our news," he says with a grin. This news will upstage even Sansa's coronation in the Winterfell gossip mill.

"I was thinking of a more private celebration first," Brienne says, giving him a sultry look. Such an expression should look ridiculous on her tear-blotched, broken-nosed face, and yet it only serves to make Jaime's cock grow harder still.

"Let's go inside," he agrees, his voice cracking slightly on the last word.

They break apart reluctantly, arms and hands still twined together as they make their way back to the keep. They don't speak much as they walk, but every so often Brienne stops to press a kiss to Jaime's cheek, and Jaime takes her in his arms and… It takes a long time for them to reach their bedchamber.

Brienne smiles as they finally reach their door, the sort of smile Jaime has only rarely seen on her face. Right now she's happy, as relieved and as much in love as he is, he knows, and yet the realisation that her father is gone will hit her again before long. She will cry again—he knows that too—in the darkness of the night when there's no one else to hear but him. And he will wrap her in his arms and love her as she deserves to be loved. In time, the pain of loss will ease. He could tell her that, but it's something she'll need to discover for herself.

And Jaime will be there by her side, husband and consort and support of any other kind she needs, when she does.


End file.
